Dr. Philip Willke

W1 Tenure Track Profes­sor at the Physikalis­che Insti­tut of the Karlsruhe Insti­tute of Technol­ogy and Emmy Noether Junior Research Group Leader

Since 2022, Philip Willke is a W1 Tenure­Track Profes­sor at the Physikalis­che Insti­tut of the Karlsruhe Insti­tute of Technol­ogy. Here, he also holds since 2020 an Emmy-Noether research group on "Quantum-coher­ent control of atomic and molec­u­lar spins on surfaces".

His research focuses on resolv­ing and control­ling quantum systems on a micro­scopic scale and atom by atom. He and his group do that by imaging and manip­u­lat­ing atoms and molecules using a special type of micro­scope – the scanning tunnel­ing micro­scope. For instance, his research created the world's small­est MRI scan — imaging the magnetic field of a single atom — as well as the world's small­est magnetic data storage — also in one atom.

For his research he was awarded "Nachwuch­swis­senschaftler des Jahres 2022" by the Deutsche Hochschul­ver­band (DHV) and Academics.de. In addition, he received the Gaede-Prize of the German Physi­cal Society as well as the Gerhard-Ertl-Young-Inves­ti­ga­tor Award. Further­more, he is an advocat for science commu­ni­ca­tion and came in 2nd place in the German Science Slam Champi­onship in 2016.